While ye old scribe would prefer not cherry-picking but rather razing the entire tainted cherry orchard, the dynamics of political realities and of setting precendents are an understandable (and bearable) concern.

Even so, it is good, good news that promises made will be promises kept (and more than certain hints are evident that the first round of repeal will be far from the last).

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration’s most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush’s practice of using “signing statements” to amend legislation.

“Every day we get indications that they’re serious about reversing the abuses of the Constitution,” Feingold, a harsh Bush critic, told Politico. Feingold said he thinks Obama is likely to issue executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies, and others have indicate that those will likely cover the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and keeping the records of past presidents secret.

“I don’t know in what order or how fast” Obama’s executive orders could come, he said. “It’ll be important that a couple of them be done immediately, and I think they will be, to show there’s a strong break from the current policy.” Source

Note that this specifically does still include order 13233.

The woebegone G. Walker admninistration (by their own admission) tried wrenching America back to the McKinley era of the 1890s. In many ways, they managed to get back to about Hoover’s 1929 instead. Repeal of executive orders setting up the framework of antiquated, superseded or discredited government is a great step.

Abandoning similar policies and overturning or mitigating laws (and expunging political-primacy bureaucrats) with the same core aims and flaws is also much in need, and a natural continuance of turning to progression rather than regression as a guiding tool.

There is nothing whatsoever amiss with studying history and with understanding (and placing in their proper context) historical precepts and policies. Unabashedly attempting to recreate history (as has been the wont of the woebegone G. Walker administration) is a fool’s errand. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattrery in interpersonal relationships, but blatant, square peg in round hole mimicry of dead eras is a disastrous method of governance.